No. 407] A NEW MYRMECOPHILE. 855 
The whole mushroom garden swarms with workers, represent- 
ing all the different casts so characteristic of the genus Atta. 
The big-headed soldiers — like ‘ Brownie" police officers — 
stalk about slowly over the surface of the comb, descending 
from time to time into the interior, as if to make sure that the 
great family is properly attending to its multifarious occupa- 
tions, while thousands of minims keep moving about through 
the meshes of the mycelium, weeding the garden. In the 
presence of these varied activities and instincts one has a feel- 
ing of regret that all * anthropomorphism" is now to be ban- 
ished from the study of ant life, and that we are asked to look 
at all this elaborate division of labor as nothing but an agglom- 
eration of machine-like “ reflexes.” 1 
It is natural to suppose with Wasmann? that the vast amount 
of comminuted and decomposing vegetable matter collected by 
the leaf-cutting ants as a soil, or culture medium for the growth 
of their mushroom diet, would form a most favorable resort for 
a great number of myrmecophiles. Nevertheless, compara- 
tively few of these symbiotic animals have been taken up to 
the present time. Besides the amphisbzenians, which, though 
often found in the nests of the tropical Attas,? may not even be 
myrmecophagous, I find mention of comparatively few species 
in the literature. These include the following histerid beetles 
taken in the nests of Azta fervens in Mexico and enumerated 
in Wasmann's very useful Verzeichnis * : Philister rufulus 
Lewis, Hister (?) costatus Mars, Reninus Salvini Lewis, and 
Carcinops (?) multistriata Lewis. Belt? saw a species of 
“ Staphylinus ” in the Atta nests of Nicaragua, and Wasmann ê 
1 See Bethe, Dürfen wir den Ameisen und Bienen psychische Qualitäten zu- 
schreiben, Arch. f. d. gesam. Physiologie, Bd. lxx (1898), pp. 15-100, Taf. . il 
5text-figs. ; and Bethe, Noch einmal über die psychischen Qualitäten der Amei- 
sen, 7did., Bd. Ixxix (1900), pp. 39-52- 
Die Ameisen- und Termitengäste von Brasilien, Verhandl. d. k. k. zool. bot. 
Gesell., pp. 2-46, Wien, Jahrg. 1895- 
3 See Bates, Zhe Naturalist on the River Amazons, London, 1876, pp. 51 and 
52; Brent, Notes on the CEcodomas, or Leaf-Cutting Ants of Trinidad, Amer. 
Nat., vol. xx (1886), pp. 123-131, No. 2 ; and Wasmann, loc. cit., p. 9: 
5 Kritisches Verzeichnis der myrmekophilen und termitophilen Arthropoden. 
Berlin, Felix Dames, 1894. A Naturalist in Nicaragua, p. 94. 
Die Ameisen- und Termitengaste von Brasilien, oc. cit. 
. 
